Love is never optional (My way) Holy death and holy smoke (The way) Let me start again
Note: To prepare to read the following, one may benefit by return to the last writing and reading it: July 14, 2025, "Streams are Everywhere: Moments of Realization."
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In the introduction to the last writing on this site, "Streams are Everywhere," I said I would share here on entering the Path, or the Stream, by using a personal narrative. Below, then, is a shift from the plural of varied ways to the Way. Still, we experience the Way through a way. To know the Stream, we enter upon a stream. I cannot separate these, only redirect the focus. A way is in the Way; the Way is in a way.
I do not mean by a way a path called spiritual or religious. Such an opening may occur via such a tradition or not. Yet, likely, most persons come to enter the Way by some such earthy way. The formless needs form, and form suited for most people to awakening is linked to a tradition of belief and practice in community. Such ways were designed to assist persons to open up to spirit, however that is understood. Sadly, some of these paths, begun by a person(s) who did experience spirit, have become calcified and hinder growth beyond conventional faith. When one begins to grow spiritually, they may discover this and need to seek another path that would facilitate spiritual emergence beyond conventional belief and practice. Such happened in my case, leaving my native religious group in my thirties and decades later dissociating from participating in the religion.
Again, as to this writing, I delayed penning this for weeks. I tend not to want to write something this personal anymore and find it exhausting. I am glad I am offering this, however. Still, I find it very difficult to put such experience into words and, yes, exhausting. Perhaps this all stems from what I experienced as being so intimate and heartfelt. To pull such heartfulness into the head, so to word it out... well, well .... How can one pull the transpersonal back into the personal and not lose something, indeed much, in the translation downward? I am well aware this work is one of throwing paint in the darkness. Nevertheless, let us proceed.
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You may recall I said in the prior writing how there are two kinds of openings. One, entering a path, or a stream. Each tradition is a stream with streams; this is a reason it is impossible, for example, to say what a Christian or Buddhist believes. American Baptist, Southern Baptist, and Freewill Baptist are different streams; in fact, there are hundreds of Baptist communions, similar yet distinct. Traditions are a stream with streams within streams.
Many Buddhists refer to persons who enter the Buddhist stream as "stream enterers." I will use the image of stream often in this writing. Christians use language like "conversion," "baptism," "born again," "justification, and "accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior."
Traditions will have their time-honored ways of referring to openings onto the Way, or stream entering. Yet, if genuine, it is the same experience, though how one experiences it can be shaped by the tradition, the culture, its history, teachings, and expectations of what the experience will or can look like. Our personalities and personal histories come into play, likewise.
New openings can occur as the initial opening unfolds over time. A person may feel drawn to adopt a particular tradition. Yet, that can be entering the Stream. For years afterward, the same person might undergo many openings to a new depth of experience of the Stream, and these can be, like the initial entering, from subtle to pronounced.
Hence, the Apostle Paul writes in the Christian Scriptures of Christians "being saved." At the same time, he speaks of the same experience as having initially occurred in the same way Buddhists speak of stream-entering: a point in time and place that becomes past tense. That is, one realization leading to any number of realizations. With each opening, one becomes more mature in the Way, more intimate with the Totality. One sees past experience through the new opening, transforming what happened then into how one sees now. Hence, realizations lead to a reinterpretation of previous openings and experiences.
Jesus spoke of this onward momentum of the Way. He said, "The one who looks back is not fit for the Kingdom of Heaven." Way leads to Way. We cannot drive forward well while looking in a rearview mirror. The past is transformed into an ever-renewing present. The tree is the acorn, the acorn is the tree.
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See, the openings are not separate from the Stream. You could get in a small boat and proceed downstream, the stream carrying the vessel and, so, you. After many miles, you are on the same river. Yet, you may increasingly know the river more through experiences of floating with the current.
The river is the river, and you are you. The river is all the changes in the river, and you are a different person as you float down the river. Nothing is separate. Nothing is apart from the moment you set out.
Entering the river is the fount of all the experiences, including increasing knowledge of the river and, thereby, of yourself. Along the way, you may not be aware of how much the journey itself is changing you. Still, there are moments where you do. You notice the deepening experience of the river and yourself primarily through hindsight.
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"You must be born from above (or, again). ... What is born of flesh is flesh, what is born of spirit is spirit."
- Jesus, Gospel of John
I ask you to read the following account as one person's experience at a moment in time and place and not as a blueprint for what anyone else needs to or should undergo. I ask you to treat the personal anecdote as a mirror through which you can look to see yourself. Ask questions. Disagree. Agree. Say "Yay!" or "That's nonsense!" Whatever... but look honestly at yourself. I invite you not to a belief, but to an experience. Shoes are not one-size-fits-all, but any shoe is a shoe.
The Stream entering for me occurred in a small, rural Southern Baptist church near my home. I was nine. I had attended worship there since I was an infant. I recall my mother laying me down on one of the wooden pews when I was tiny. The sanctuary had two rows of long, varnished, wooden pews. My mother laying me on a pew to the right of the pulpit and lectern is one of my first memories.
In this congregation, people spoke of accepting Jesus into their hearts. That was called, also, among other things, being born again, salvation, and conversion. After each Sunday worship meeting, one in the morning and one in the evening, the pastor would lead an "invitation time" with an "invitational hymn." The hymn would suit the occasion: slow, soft, suggestive. An example is the hymn "Oh, Why Not Tonight?" - of course, only sung after evening worship. Another invitational hymn was "Just As I Am." My recollection of this night is that it was the former.
We believed a person needed to be urged inwardly - often referred to as "being under the conviction of the Holy Spirit" - and of the "age of accountability - when a person was old enough to make up their up own mind about Jesus - so, infant baptism was out. We who had not been "saved" had no idea when we would feel this inner conviction. When we did, we could go up to the pastor or not. Yet, if we turned away, we risked an everlasting damnation in fiery hell, with a devil and his friends. If we said "Yes," we had our ticket to an everlasting, blissful city in the sky with other saved folk.
This experience of being born again could happen anywhere and at any time. Still, for almost all, it occurred in a worship meeting after the sermon, and we would walk up to the pastor who stood ready and waiting for persons to accept Jesus and become a member of the local congregation. When one accepted Jesus in this way, they automatically became a church member, which we often referred to as being "on the church roll." Afterward, baptism by immersion could be planned for a Sunday afternoon at my Uncle Edward's fish pond - a favorite abode of moccasins.
I did not look forward to this walking up before the congregation. I was a shy boy. I liked remaining quiet and out of sight. The night, however, arrived when I felt overwhelmed by a powerful sense of needing to walk up to our pastor, Rev. James Carter, who served us on Sundays and Wednesday nights and worked full-time otherwise for Canada Dry.
Well, the pastor had given his sermon. I do not know what he said. I doubt I even listened. After all, what nine-year-old would? We, then, began singing the first stanza of the invitational hymn.
I felt an overwhelming push, physical in nature, to step into the middle aisle and walk up. That push is challenging to describe. I cannot. I knew beyond a doubt that I was being inwardly called to go up to our pastor. With the sense of push came a voice telling me to go up, but I did not hear words. Nothing or no one said, "Brian! go up." Yet, the message was clear. And I knew why I was to go up. A voice and a push were enough to know, and I felt like I could barely stand my ground of "No! Please, not me walking up in front of all these people!"
I fought this inner summons to the end of the first stanza. If no one went up, rarely would we sing another stanza. I had survived and could relax. Well, no. Rev. Carter said we would sing another stanza. He likely saw I was "under conviction" - being a pastor myself for many years, I could see people who were feeling this urge to step forth and enter the Stream.
During the second stanza "No!" turned into a "Yes." I looked up at my mother, who was standing to my right. I told her, "I think I'm being led to go up." She told me to go up if I wished to. I respect that she did not tell me I ought to. She knew it had to be my decision - Stream entering is always personal, even if communal. No one can push anyone into the Stream. That night, I was the only one who could say "Yes." We did not believe religious experience could be passed along like a family heirloom.
I stepped out into the aisle, having moved past my mother, and everything changed - then, and for the rest of my life, to this moment of writing these words. I began walking. I was crying. Tears were streaming. And upon stepping out, I became very light, like filled with air, and walking on air. My sense was of being carried the rest of the way to the front. Time and space shifted in a manner I had not experienced before. There was a sense of spaciousness, not merely mental but physical as well.
When I arrived at the front, the pastor asked what my purpose was for coming forward. I spoke, "I want to be saved." The idea was to be saved from sin and, thus, escape everlasting damnation. Yet, I did not feel fear or guilt. I felt like my entire being had been opened to Love by Love itself. I did not know sin in those moments, I only knew Love.
The pastor said what we called "the prayer of salvation." As was custom, I repeated after him, segment by segment. Essentially, it was an invitation to Jesus, a welcome to him, and an asking for forgiveness. Hence, quickly, I had entered the Stream by accepting this opening that arose in and for me.
The pastor and I stood side by side. He told the congregation I had accepted Jesus as my personal Savior. Gladdened faces were looking back at me from all over the sanctuary. The song leader led in several other stanzas, and people began, pew by pew, filing up to welcome and congratulate me. I was given handshakes, hugs, congratulations, and streams of tears. These few minutes were a big celebration, a family all excited at the arrival of a new sibling. I was treated like a newborn, for I was. And in all this time, I never felt any shyness. I knew only the love of Love itself. A Love that was love, a Presence unable to do otherwise than welcome and love me without any hint of disappointment or condemnation.
After the meeting, I sat alone in the dark, in my parents' car. I noticed what felt like a weight off my body, and I compared it to a crocker sack full of grain having been lifted off my back - an apt metaphor, for I was raised on a farm. While in the meeting, love was the predominant feeling; here, the prevalent sense was one of peace.
The following day, I went to school. I was still in the afterglow of the night before. When anyone had such a conversion experience, they would notify the teacher, and she would share the news with the class. A celebration would follow. I recall sitting in my desk, thinking of how Jesus was my best friend, and I did not want to do anything that would disappoint him. I did not want to disappoint him, not for he told me not to, but for I loved him.
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While I had gone to church meetings for nine years, that was the moment of entering the Path, or Stream. But was it? These moments are the continuance of an evolving transformation. This does not annul the significance of the time and place of an initial opening, however. Unfolding entails beginning. We do not go somewhere but from somewhere. Both equally belong.
That happening in time and place, in 1969, at the Philadelphia Missionary Baptist Church in Georgia, USA, in the Handtown community, has served as an anchor for me for over five decades. The memory is vivid, the moment alive.
I understand the opening differently these decades - fifty-four years since that night. Nevertheless, I cannot fathom what happened. I can hint at it, never speak it. The experience remains the same. The understanding of it changes. And there have been many openings since. And all this is how it needs to be, for this is how it is.
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Such openings happen in time and place, yet they arise from outside time and place. They have a life of their own. We do not own them. The experience at age nine is not my experience. As Gyungho Lee writes, "We are participants, not proprietors" (Let It Come: Seeing without Chasing). In some sense, these openings own us, for they shape us in ways we could never have dreamed possible and never have made to be. We enter through surrender, we live by surrender. How we enter is how we live. Yet, to learn what this means practically is ongoing. The line is not straight; it is forward then backward.
Receptivity is the beginning and remains the way all along the Way. Returning to the image of the river, you do not make the current. You yield to it. You can participate with it, such as in how you row or set a sail, but you cannot create it, control it, or own it.
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All the possibilities and prospects of the Stream are enfolded in the potential and potency of a single moment of entrance - a giving of self over to the Way. And how we enter the Stream is not of utmost importance. That we enter is what is important. To enter the Stream and not merely a stream among streams is, likewise, key.
I entered a stream one night, yet I was being given over to the Stream for it to buoy me up and carry me along. The Stream was taking me to and into itself - really, it was showing me I had never been separate from it, could not be. And I could never have dreamed then where it would take me. I cherish with gratitude that beginning. I often return to it, remembering that night. I will never outlive that night in late 1969, for it lives within me, and it lives as me. Yet, too, it lives as so much more than me, and always will. Where it leads, I do not know, and I am okay with not knowing.
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Now, I could elaborate more on this. How I see that night differently now. How I am no longer identified as a part of the church or of a religion, yet still identify as religious. Such is not my purpose here. You can read about that elsewhere on this site. None of that changes what happened that night. No changes can erase it or diminish its realness and importance. So, for now, I leave the story with you, the reader, told in feeble thought and faltering words. I know its truth, and I cherish it the more as I am carried along downstream, still the thankful recipient of grace. And, well, one last word: love.
